1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a portable terminal device such as a mobile phone unit and to a reception method used by such a portable terminal, and in particular relates to technology to display content on a portable terminal device.
2. Description of the Related Art
The spread of mobile phone units and other portable terminals in recent years has been accompanied by commercialization of mobile phone units which, in addition to typical transmission and reception functions for conversation as well as e-mail transmission/reception functions and Internet connection functions, also incorporate such varied functions as television (hereafter “TV”) reception functions, video game functions, and camera functions. In the case of a unit incorporating TV reception functions, a tuner for broadcast reception is built-in.
The various above-described functions are obtained through control and processing based on application programs (hereafter “applications”) stored in internal memory of the mobile phone unit in advance. Applications have their own unique functions, and may be used either independently or in concert with other applications. For example, in addition to conversation processing in use as a telephone set, games may be displayed onscreen, the unit may be used as a camera, music may be output, and various other processing may be performed. For example, in the case of applications related to display, an application may be read from memory corresponding to an instruction input by user operation of a select/execute button or the like on the mobile phone unit; the application is interpreted and executed by the CPU (Central Processing Unit) which controls the various devices incorporated into the unit, causing content to be displayed in the display portion of the unit.
When an application related to display is executed in a mobile phone unit, there are cases in which two applications are executed simultaneously, and displays based on the two applications are displayed simultaneously. As an example of simultaneous displays based on two applications, for example, a Web browser and mailer may be started. A Web browser is an application which connects to the Internet and causes the contents of a web page or the like to be displayed. A Web browser may be used to specify a particular URL (Uniform Resource Locator); or, by using a search engine or the like, the contents of a object resource may be found through the Internet connection. Also, a mailer is an application to send and receive e-mail. By using a mailer, a sender and a receiver can specify each other's mail address to send and receive e-mail.
Upon simultaneously starting these two applications, and simultaneously causing the contents of each to be displayed on a single screen, for example, the Web browser can be used to enjoy the Internet connection while viewing e-mail displayed within the mailer.
Patent Reference 1 discloses a mobile phone unit which uses two types of display screens, which are a main display portion and a secondary display portion, and which can simultaneously process a plurality of applications and cause application content to be displayed on the different display screens.
Patent Reference 1: Published Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-204378 (FIG. 2)